Gone for diving
Contributor
I agree when you have a compressor it does tend to keep going in what you want to add on, bank ,etcAs stated, you'll never save. Not just because of ongoing costs, but because it will never be enough and you'll keep throwing money into it. My initial reasoning for wanting a compressor is I live 2 hours from the dive sites I frequent, so I just drive up for the day to dive. If at the end of the day I had to get fills then drive home, it would be pretty late. It got tiring. Trying to get fills at my local dive shop was a joke. Doubles were $30-40 a pop and usually underfilled or off by multiple %. So originally I wanted a Bauer Jr. Then I realized it wouldn't be enough, so I got a used K14. That was great for a while, but then I needed a booster too. Then I decided I needed to start vipping and cleaning all of my tanks, so I bought all of the gear necessary for that including a tank tumbler. What I didn't know is that because I'm filling my own tanks, they're always spotless. My tanks always needed to be tumbled previously because of the crap gas the local dive shops near me were pumping. So all of the tumbling equipment sits unused. Then I decided I needed bank bottles. God only knows what's next.
Point is, buy a setup if you think you'll enjoy it and it makes life convenient. Expect to spend twice your initial budget. I really enjoy forgetting all of my problems by walking out into my garage and filling tanks and working on dive gear. I estimate I'm in the $18-20k range with everything I've purchased (that's a very conservative number cause the real numbers are scary). Luckily I bought more compressor than I needed from the get-go or I would have had to buy twice.
But Ill bet you are doing more diving or different diving,
so that will cost you more at the dive shop,
I know when I got my first compressor I was not diving that much, but after it was like should have a big compressor,
I actually dived more and I was more spontaneous,
I think its mostly convenient, to have a compressor,
buying new it's harder to break even, some people can save money doing it, by waiting for a good deal on a compressor,
But if you are someone that just decides they are buying something, without waiting for a good buy, then yes it's hard to break even,